More than 120 people, fitted with matching baby-blue hair nets, stop what they’re doing to appreciate the magnitude of their work. Another 1,000 meals has been packaged for needy children.

The scene repeats itself 10 times in two hours in the Campbell United Methodist Church’s Fellowship Hall.

The hall, typically used for gatherings and dinners, looks more like a factory as volunteers work together like a well-oiled machine: one person holds a clear bag under a funnel while another drops in a vitamin and mineral packet, followed by a cup of soy meal and then a cup of rice. “Runners” then take the meal packages to others to seal them and then 36 packages, containing 216 dehydrated meals, are boxed and stacked to the side.

No one here is working for a paycheck or even a pat on the back. Knowing that these meals will go to feed hungry children in developing countries seems to be enough compensation to keep the volunteers moving at a rapid, yet jovial, pace.

“I don’t know who feels better, the people packaging the meals or the people receiving the food,” said Karen Noe, community development director for Stop Hunger Now. The international nonprofit group has been coordinating events like the one at Campbell United Methodist Church throughout the country for the last 14 years.

The Northern California office, which Noe heads, has been in existence for only nine months. But in that time the office has overseen 25 events with 1,200 volunteers and the packaging of approximately 350,000 meals.

“We have a saying, ‘From our hands to their tummies,'” said Noe, a Los Gatos resident who grew up in Saratoga. “Whenever I come to an event, I feel so gratified to know that we are not only doing something about hunger, helping someone we may never meet, but we are changing the lives of the people that package the meals as well.”

That is true for Campbell resident Carol Laucella, who helped organize the Jan. 12 event at the church. She had attended a similar event with a friend last October and knew immediately that it was something she wanted to bring to her church.

“It was the best two hours of the year,” she said. “It’s fun, exciting and it meant so much to know that I was filling these packages that were going to be opened by children thousands of miles away. It’s much better than just writing a check.”

The hands-on experience wasn’t left just to adults. Children, whom one adult called “equal partners,” were filling bags, acting as runners and doing any job that fell in between.

But the most remarkable thing may not have been what they were all doing, but how many of them there were doing it.

Stop Hunger Now recommends that at least 40 to 50 people take part in each event. However, Laucella said she was up half the night before worrying that not enough volunteers would show up.

Instead, about four times the expected number came out. Some were friends of church members, others were members of the New Creation United Methodist Church, which shares space with the Campbell congregation, and some were members of San Jose’s SABA Islamic Center, which participates with the church in inter-faith programs.

SABA member Mustafa Khan said he and his friends were pleased to know something like this was happening in their area and wanted to participate.

“It’s something tangible we could without just donating money,” Khan said. “It’s just two hours and they asked for a few people, so here we are.”

Each meals costs 25 cents, and with 10,000 meals packaged at each event, volunteers are asked to raise $2,500 in order to host an event. Most meals are sent overseas to school feeding programs. Providing a hot meal to children at schools gives parents more incentive to have their children educated, especially girls, who are less likely to be sent to school otherwise, Noe said.

More than 800 million people are believed to go hungry each day, with most of those living in developing nations, said Brandon Romano, program manager with Stop Hunger Now’s Southern California office.

“People’s lives matter,” he said. “We don’t want to just give food to people; we want their lives to change.”

The best way to check if one’s faith is genuine is to see how one treats the poor, weak and powerless, said pastor Paul Kim said.

“We care for the poor and the hungry around the globe not only because we are on the same cosmic boat called Earth, but because they are also our brothers and sisters, human beings created by God. Wouldn’t that be how we would want to be treated and thought of if we hadn’t hit the genetic lotto and happened to be born to parents who lived in America?” he said.

And Romano said that those receiving the meals understand how much they’re being helped. As one young boy in Haiti told him, “Thank you, your meals give me intelligence.”

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